Jonathan Tamari

Jonathan Tamari is the Inquirer’s Washington correspondent. He writes about the lawmakers, politics and policy that affect Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Tamari previously covered the Philadelphia Eagles and the NFL. Before that he worked in Trenton, reporting on the characters and color of New Jersey state government. He lives in Washington.

"The NRA has reached a new low in public discourse," Nutter said at a Washington hearing in which he endorsed Obama’s calls for new gun laws.

Nutter was referring to an NRA ad that called Obama an "elitist hypocrite" for allowing the Secret Service to protect his daughters at school but for expressing skepticism at the gun-rights group’s call for putting armed guards in every school.

"Are the president's kids more important than yours," a narrator asks in the ad.

UPDATE: U.S. Rep. Jon Runyan, a South Jersey Republican, also criticized the NRA ad in a statement Wednesday afternoon.

"What this discussion does not need is what we saw today from the NRA," said Runyan, who has received electoral support from the NRA in the past. "Their ad referencing President Obama’s children was at the very least inappropriate and diverts the discussion away from the important issues."

Nutter, a longtime advocate of tougher gun laws, was at the White House for Obama’s speech today unveiling his new plan, and then spoke to sympathetic House Democrats who are also backing the president's plan.

Every year in America, he said, more than 100,000 people are shot and 11,583 are murdered. Every day, he added, 50 children and teens are shot and eight die, including five who are murdered.

"If this was disease killing that many people, if this were accidents killing that many people, if this were bags of tainted spinach killing that many people, this country would immediately take swift action to stop that kind of death toll," Nutter said. "Somehow some are seemingly paralyzed when it comes to guns and violence."